The first big works of 2012

Woohoo! Got home this evening from a full day meeting in Birmingham, and was informed by my frankly fabulous husband that he had been removing fencing and growth from one side of the garden that has been looking very ratty indeed. Of course, I couldn't wait and sloshed out in the mud with a torch to have a look, and I'm delighted with the difference it's made.
Unfortunately, I haven't trained him to take before and after shots, so this evening I'm going to have to post one of the few pictures I have of that side of the garden as it was this summer and see if I can get him to take a picture for me tomorrow. ** UPDATE: NEW PHOTOS BELOW**

I've been avoiding photographing that edge of the garden because the person who lived here before had a bizarre fence fetish; not content with the neighbour's ten foot high wooden fence, he added a chain link fence, a wood and wire fence (in some cases all three fencing types co-exist with each other in a bizarre fence mosaic) and an assortment of logs, metal sheets and who knows what else to bolster up a drop in height from the neighbour's garden to ours. He also threw greenery at it and allowed it all to get horribly tangled and overgrown until everything was competing with everything else...oh, it was a mess.

Only this autumn our wonderful friends and extended family, known as The Posse, spent a few days helping us make a dent in all the craziness along that edge of the garden, and I think they'll be pleased to see what all their hard work and sweat has led to. Of course, it'll look better when it greens up again, but to me the difference is already wonderful. And it gives us the chance to put a little more infrastructure in. There's a little terrace just waiting to happen, and a rockery, and a place for the boys' hammocks. Woohoo! all over again.

These two pictures show what we're removing.

The purpose of the chain link seems to be to

throw random  things between the two fences to

 retain the soil behind. An elegant solution, indeed (!)

And how it looks after Mark's work yesterday. We will be clearing up the debris, obviously, but I'm so pleased with the improvement made just by having the one kind of fence. Of course, as we go up and the difference between the height of the gardens grows, we'll have to find our own - free - way of retaining the ground. Hopefully something more attractive...